As we move closer to Election Day, most Americans are angry, exhausted and dissatisfied by the current state of our politics. Only 4 percent say the political system is working “extremely” or even “very well.” Sixteen percent say they trust the federal government always or most of the time, a historical low going back nearly 70 years. Trust in Congress is near record lows.
A silver lining is that eras of widespread dissatisfaction are often eras of major political reform. And while nearly all attention is fixated on the presidential race, Americans in a number of states will also be voting on some of the most significant sets of political reforms in decades. Taken together, these ballot measures — in red, blue and purple states — constitute a major referendum on whether we can reduce political extremism through institutional change.
These proposals are intended to make the political system more responsive to the preferences of a majority of voters, rather than continuing a system that has become easy prey for factional minorities.
The major reform, on the ballot in six states and Washington, D.C., would do away with traditional party primaries. Primaries have become a significant force in driving politics to the extremes and making governing more difficult. Turnout in midterm primaries is notoriously low — as low as about 14 percent of eligible voters in 2014, and rarely above 20 percent in the last decade (2022 marked a high of 21 percent). Moreover, studies show that primary voters tend to be unrepresentative of general-election voters. They are older, wealthier and whiter; there is more debate over whether primary voters are more ideologically extreme, but the most recent analyses of the past three midterms concludes that they are.
More important, politicians certainly believe primary voters are more extreme, and those in office behave accordingly. Research in the 2020 book, “Rejecting Compromise: Legislators’ Fear of Primary Voters,” is based on interviews with dozens of members of Congress and state legislatures, who said they know that “primary voters are much more likely to punish them for compromising than general election voters or donors.”
These low-turnout, unrepresentative primary electorates determine the nominees of each party. In the general election, voters will then have to choose between two candidates who might be favored by only a small faction of voters. In safe seats, there is no incentive for the dominant party’s primary voters to worry that their candidate, even an ideologically extreme figure, might lose in the general election.
Incumbents fear being “primaried” from the extreme wings of their primary electorates. To pre-empt that, they often adopt more extreme positions. As surveys in “Rejecting Compromise” found, this leads to legislators representing “the uncompromising positions held by a subset of their voters at the expense of the broader electorates’ preferences.” Rob Portman, a former Ohio senator who retired rather than face a primary, has said the same.
The traditional party primary can also eliminate candidates whom a majority of general-election voters would prefer but who cannot get through the party primary; the very qualities that give them broad appeal in a general election are often anathema to a party’s primary voters. Moderates with broad appeal often choose not to run in the first place for several reasons, among them the difficulty of getting past primary electorates.
To restore the principle of majority rule, voters in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and South Dakota will be voting on ballot measures that would replace traditional primaries with a single, unified primary in which all candidates would run (Nevada voters already approved that change once, but a second approval is required for it to take effect). The top few candidates (typically, top four or five) would then go on to the general election. That ensures that candidates who would have significant appeal in the general election are not prematurely eliminated at the early, primary stage.
To win the general election, a candidate must receive a majority (not just a plurality) of the votes. Different ballot measures provide different ways to determine the winner — but no matter the details, the underlying purpose of them all is to ensure victory for the candidates with the broadest electoral support.
Alaska began using this system in 2022, and it has worked much as reformers hoped. In the most high-profile race, Senator Lisa Murkowski, an incumbent Republican, was re-elected. She has broad support in Alaska but probably would not have survived the state’s traditional Republican Party primary; she was one of the two Republicans, — the other being Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming — whose defeat former President Donald Trump sought most aggressively. But in the new single, unified primary Ms. Murkowski was one of the top four vote-getters; she made it to the general election, where her broad support made her the majority winner. In the Senate, she is one of the significant centers of bipartisan deal-making.
In the Alaska Legislature, the result was similar. Candidates who would have lost in traditional party primaries won instead, with broad electoral appeal. Even more important, Alaska’s legislative process appears to have become less contentious and divisive, with some of these successful candidates playing essential roles in forging cross-party coalitions on critical issues.
Political party leaders and many elected officials, though, dislike the shift to unified primaries because it takes away some of the party’s control. They are trying to persuade Alaska voters to repeal the new, unified primary structure through another ballot measure this fall; that will give voters a chance to express directly their views about how the new system has worked in practice.
Other major political reform proposals on the ballot next week in other states similarly aim to restore the principle of majority rule. Oregon is keeping its traditional party primaries, but voters will decide whether to use ranked-choice voting for federal offices and state executive offices. Ranked-choice voting requires a candidate to win a majority of votes, rather than just a plurality; it is another means of reducing the risk of more factional, extreme candidates winning despite a lack of true majority support.
Gerrymandering is another means by which political minorities can capture control of legislative bodies. Ohio has been one of the most gerrymandered states in recent years, and a ballot measure there — with leading proponents like the former chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, a Republican — would ban partisan gerrymandering and take redistricting out of the hands of politicians and give it to an independent commission.
Studies suggest that Americans might be less polarized than members of Congress. The initiatives on the ballot next week will not solve all the problems of American politics — but they can at least start to diminish some of the forces that are leaving so many Americans alienated from the democratic process.
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